Category «Librarian Resources»

Information Quality Resources and Expert Resources

Marcus Zillman’s guide is a comprehensive and selective bibliography including search engines, world wide web resources, services and sites currently offering free, value added content on the web. As more and more of the global population is accessing the web, making informed choices about what content to use to obtain reliable, accurate, actionable information becomes more critical. This guide provides an extensive range of reliable, relevant information to leverage – whether you are an educator, a librarian, a researcher, a lawyer, a student, a professional working on mission critical organizational objectives, or in the interest of current awareness. Gaining insight into your resources can be a challenging process if undertaken without benchmarks and skillfully researched pathfinders. This guide comprises a wide range of resources for everyone who regularly engages with web content for knowledge discovery, producing work product, and creating value added content related to specific sectors, issues or topics.

Subjects: Business Research, Competitive Intelligence, Information Management, Librarian Resources, Reference Resources, Reference Services, Web Site Evaluation

Unpacking and overcoming edutainment in library instruction

Within our field, and more widely, there is a way of thinking that equates effective teaching with effective entertaining. This way of thinking can be referred to as a “discourse of edutainment.” It underpins some of the publications and conversations that encourage librarians to make their teaching more entertaining, for example by playing improv games or adding humour. In this article, Sarah Polkinghorne examines the edutainment discourse in three ways. First, she identifies and analyses it. Next, she connect it to larger concerns, such as creating significant learning experiences and wrestling with public speaking fear. To conclude she describe several concepts from the performing arts that could better support librarians working to teach in ways that are as engaging, significant, and enjoyable as possible.

Subjects: Libraries & Librarians, Library Marketing, Library Software & Technology, Program Planning

Vermonts Legislature is Considering Support for Blockchain Technology and Smart Contracts

Bitcoin is a significant disruptive technology with a growing impact on the financial sector and legal sectors, around the world. Alan Rothman expertly educates us on new legislation from Vermont that is intended to move the state towards using blockchain technology for “records, smart contracts and other applications”. One of the key distinctions Rothman highlights is that Vermont is not in any manner approving or adopting Bitcoin, but rather, the state is diversifying and adapting the underlying blockchain technology that supports it.

Subjects: Business Research, Intellectual Property, Internet Trends, Legal Education, Legal Technology, Legislative, Technology Trends

Seuss Oh the Places Youll Go: Still Rings True Today

Cheryl Niemeier answers the questions many members have following the decision to change the name of the Private Law Libraries-Special Interest Section (PLL-SIS) of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) to the Private Law Librarians & Information Professionals-Special Interest Section (PLLIP-SIS).

Subjects: American Association of Law Libraries, Competitive Intelligence, Law Librarians, Legal Marketing, Library Marketing

Watson, is That You? Yes, and Ive Just Demo-ed My Analytics Skills at IBMs New York Office

Alan Rothman attended a demo of IBM’s Watson Technology, and the shares insights about the core components of this high profile new analytical tool. The technology holds potential value for multiple sectors and cross functional work streams, and as Alan notes, is still under development with additional applications forthcoming.

Subjects: Ahead of the Curve, Business Research, Competitive Intelligence, Information Management, KM, Social Media

Journalism Resources on the Internet

Marcus P. Zillman’s new guide is a selective, comprehensive bibliography of reliable, subject specific and actionable sources of journalism resources and sites for researchers in all sectors. This guide will support your goal to discover new sources, refresh your acquaintance with sources you know but that have evolved, and provide additional strategic methods to locate and leverage information in your work.

Subjects: Business Research, Competitive Intelligence, Internet Resources, Online Legal Research Services, Open Source, Search Engines, Search Strategies, Social Media, Technology Trends

IBM’s Watson is Now Data Mining TED Talks to Extract New Forms of Knowledge

Alan Rothman’s commentary offers actionable information about a new technology from IBM called Watson that is a powerful tool for researchers whose work engages data mining, knowledge management and competitive intelligence. Rothman attended a recent presentation that demonstrated how Watson is deployed as a search and discovery tool whose object is the huge video archive of TED Talks content.

Subjects: Business Research, Competitive Intelligence, KM

Emerging roles and possible futures for librarians and information professionals

Author, professor, editor, librarian – Bruce Rosenstein’s article addresses the following critical questions – What professional roles do you play as a librarian/information professional? How have they changed during your career? And perhaps most important, how do you see them changing and evolving in the future?

Subjects: Competitive Intelligence, Legal Marketing, Libraries & Librarians, Technology Trends, Virtual Library